Long-awaited community public safety oversight board aims to give Chicagoans ‘a stronger voice in how they are policed’

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday appointed a group of community leaders to head the city’s civilian police accountability commission, a move experts hope will help improve public safety while creating more accountability for cops accused of misconduct.

The group includes representation from all over the city, North to South to West, with members rooted in historic organizations like the NAACP as well as newer organizing efforts like the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability, which helped pass the ordinance creating the new commission.

There is a South Side community organizer who has worked in the labor movement, a minister from Lincoln Park and the former chief legal counsel with the Illinois State Police. There are two youth representatives, as well as an attorney leads a legal clinic specializing in representation of court-involved youth.

“This is the culmination of six years of hard work, a lot of community work,” said Mecole Jordan-McBride, who was the founding coordinator of the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability, or GAPA, one of the coalitions that helped create the commission.

Jordan-McBride, who now runs the the Chicago Neighborhood Policing Initiative, said she was pleased with the group’s diversity, saying it stood to offer a wide range of experience and thought that will improve public safety.

“I am hopeful that Chicago’s public safety atmosphere will drastically change with having community members have a stronger voice in how they are policed,” Jordan-McBride said.

The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability — which has been debated intensely over the past five years in a process that drew input from dozens of community groups — is considered key not only to police reform but to ensuring that Chicago residents have more say in how public safety is achieved in the city. Lightfoot and aldermen, aligned with community activists, reached agreement last summer on an ordinance creating the commission, which passed the City Council.

Under that ordinance, the commission will have direct input in both the selection and removal of Chicago police superintendents, including the approval of a list of candidates for the mayor to select from when filling the position. The ordinance, which emphasizes collaboration, grants the commission and the department the ability to draft policy — but it is the commission that votes to approve it. The mayor retains the ability to reject a policy within 60 days. The City Council can override any veto with a two-thirds vote.

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The ordinance also creates elected councils in each police district that will provide input directly to the commission.

LaCreshia Birts, the current coordinator for GAPA who has also worked with other community organizations as the commission was created, said the interim commission makeup has been well-received so far. The involved groups are now ready to move ahead to ensure the commission does what it was supposed to do – give the community a strong voice.

“All factions who were at the table are pretty pleased,” she said. “We are trying to act as one coalition. We are trying our hardest to move forward as a solid coalition group, pushing the district councils and making sure the ordinance fulfills all the promises.”

Birts said the coalition of groups will begin Tuesday on organizing and informing the public about the elections with a press conference at City Hall.

Lightfoot’s picks include Yvette Loizon, a lawyer who served as Chief Legal Counsel to the Illinois State Police; Anthony Driver Jr., a community activist and public affairs specialist; Oswaldo Gomez, a community organizer and graduate student at the University of Chicago; Cliff Nellis, a executive director of the Lawndale Christian Legal Center; Remel Terry, second vice president of the Chicago Westside NAACP; Isaac Troncoso, a a community advocate who has worked on political campaigns; and Rev. Dr. Beth Brown, he pastor at Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church.

The head of the Chicago’s patrol union said the new commission was not needed — nor would it address the violence in Chicago.

“It’s more … overlapping oversight,” John Catanzara, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police.

The commission, however, stands out from other established boards in that it aims to provide direct input from the public about how to improve policing and public safety in Chicago. That, supporters pointed out, would include considering how to improve conditions for officers, such as with better training.

Catanzara argued instead for changes to existing systems of oversight, including the courts and in agencies that handle police misconduct cases.